Photos: Ana Opalić
Video performance created in abandoned iron factory space of ‘Željezara Sisak’.
Video excerpts
/ Production
Author(s): Vesna Mačković, Ana Opalić
Filming and editing: Ana Opalić
Željezara Sisak, Croatia
☞ For interviews, guest appearances or other inquiries, contact info@vesnamackovic.com ili +385 99 200 40 40.
Concept / Description
Video performance ‘Salute’ was created in June of 2014. in abandoned iron factory space of ‘Željezara Sisak’.
In 1990. I moved to Sisak as a 15-year-old in anticipation of high-school days’ excitement and youth. The war and isolation due to illness that struck me made it impossible to even sniff the city of Sisak. After 13 long years, happy circumstances in my life put me in a position of saying goodbye to isolation and disease, and war was also already long behind us. It seemed like a fairy tale when spoken aloud. But the story is different. The city was destroyed. Earlier, people had been barely breathing because of the large industry and pollution. Now they were barely breathing because there was nothing. Eager for sunshine and getting to know the city, I could now only explore human depression and emptiness of a plucked city. I only knew how to … leave.
In this video performance I imagine coming back to Sisak. I try to deal with the city and my personal history after years of absence.
City of Sisak could be any city.
Vesna Mačković
Lying for years due to illness isolated from people, the world, the city
Must be the same in any city?
To stand up after a long illness
Still I believe cannot be the same in any city.
City of Sisak. It had no air. I did not breathe with it.
I went away from it, I ran …
To search for other cities. That breathe. Or with whom I breathe.
By mistake I took anger with me.
Anger for not knowing how to change the cities that do not breathe.
So for a moment I reappeared.
I was hitting the walls that echoed, and the city yelled through my ears.
And I still do not know how to help it, how to breathe with it.
I’m leaving. Again.
Quotes
To the city which is dying, but has lived.
To the city with which I have never breathed as one.
To the soil that has soaked sweat and poisons.And happiness and smiles.
To the workers who are freed.
To the systems that come and go. And devastate.
To all of us who persistently walk forward, not knowing to where, why and how much more.